NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT: Rounding Out The High End
by Derek Wilson & Josh Venning on August 11, 2005 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Doom 3 Performance
One of the most demanding games that we test in terms of graphics, Doom 3 shows some impressive gains. Let's take a look.
We'll start by comparing the 6800 Ultra and the 7800 GT. The most notable increase here is at 2048x1536 with AA enabled, where we see a 43% improvement in fps with the 7800 GT. We get a similar increase (48.4%) at that resolution without AA enabled, but with AA, we went from 19.3 fps, an unplayable framerate, to 27.6, which is borderline-playable. At 1600x1200, both AA and no AA see only about a 14% increase.
As expected, we see higher gains than this when we compare one 6800 Ultra to two in SLI mode. Without AA, the framerates for both resolutions increase by around 30 fps, a 34% increase at 16x12, and a 77.6% increase at 20x15. The gains are even more impressive with AA enabled. 16x12 AA goes from 41.6 to 75.4, an increase of 81.3%; and at 20x15 AA, from 19.3 to 38.8 - an impressive 101% increase.
The gains that we see with the 7800 GT will definitely make a difference in performance with this game, but unfortunately, the GT still struggles at 20x15 with AA enabled. Two 6800Us in SLI mode don't have this problem, and in fact, they handle 20x15 with AA fairly well. This might not matter however, to those who don't care about AA at high resolutions.
It's interesting to note that Doom 3 appears more dependent on GPU memory bandwidth than GPU processing speed, at least in certain scenarios. Notice how the 6800 Ultra SLI configuration actually beats the 7800 GT SLI configuration in several of the tests. The 6800 cards do seem to have more problems with the 20x15 resolution, however.
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MemberSince97 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
I hear these OC pretty well, how about some comparisons.adonn78 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
First off, no gamer plays videogames at resolutions above 1600x1200! Most of us stick to 1024x768 so that we can get high framerates and enable akk thge features and play the game on the highest settings. In addition you did not show how the GT and GTX stacked up against the previous generation suchs as the 6800 ultra, GT and the 5950 ultra. And Where is the AGP version? My computer is 2 years old and I am upgrading my graphics card soon. I guess I'll wait to see if ATI makes AGP cards for their next generation. And where the heck is the R520? ATI is really lagging this time around. Hopefully we will get some AGP love. AGP still got a good 2 years of life left in it.Locut0s - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Speak for yourself but as an owner of a 21" CRT, and I know I'm not the only one, I can see using resolutions above 1600x1200 quiet easily.JNo - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
"no gamer plays videogames at resolutions above 1600x1200!"Er, I have a Dell 2405 monitor running at 1920x1200 and I always run it native where possible (even with my 6600GT, many modern games are *playable* including CS Source, Far Cry) so this statement is complete balls. Obviously I would like a faster card to run games as smooth as possible so the tested resolutions are extremely pertinent to me.
DrZoidberg - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
The high resolutions are needed cause at 1024x768 there will hardly be any difference between 6800GT, 7800GT, x850xt, 7800GTX cause all these cards handle this resolution easily and they will give similar fps cause they will all be CPU limited.vijay333 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
I believe the higher resolutions are used because at the lower ones there really isn't much differentiation between the various cards. The article title is "Rounding Out The High End" so hopefully there'll be another comparing the performance against mid-range cards (high-end from previous generation). AGP is missing, but is there really that much difference between the AGP and PCIe versions of the same card?vijay333 - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Cool. very recently bought an eVGA 6800GT. given their step-up program, plan on paying the difference and getting the 7800 GT in 2-3 months when the price is bound to be lower.John - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
Josh/Derek, please add 6800 Ultra benchmarks to this review for a comparison.GoatMonkey - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
They at least have ATI 850 benchmarks on there. You can approximate where the 6800 series cards are going to be from that. It would be nice to see them on there also though if possible.Lonyo - Thursday, August 11, 2005 - link
They have, just not for BF2.